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[Value of eosinopenia in inflammatory disorders: an "old" marker revisited]
1Service de médecine interne, praticien hospitalier, centre hospitalier universitaire Jean-Minjoz, 25000, Besançon, France. hgil@chu-besancon.fr <hgil@chu-besancon.fr>
Purpose:
The value of eosinopenia as a test in favour of an infectious disease was suggested by Schilling since 1929. We tried to verify this hypothesis with a prospective and multicentric study.
Patients And Methods:
One thousand and thirty-eight patients were included (82 females and 56 males, means age: 71.8 years). Diagnoses were: 83 infectious diseases, 38 systemic diseases, 10 neoplasia and 7 miscellaneous.
Results:
The mean value of eosinophils was 72/mm3 in bacterial infectious diseases and 214/mm3 in non infectious diseases (p < 0.01). When leukocytes were higher than 10,000/mm3 and eosinophils counts less than 40/mm3, predictive value for an infectious bacterial disease was 100% as well as specificity. Under same conditions, when protein C reactive was higher than 100mg x l(-1), the predictive value was 85% and the specificity was 57%.
Conclusion:
Our study shows that an inflammatory syndrome associated with hyperleucocytosis above 10,000/mm3 and eosinophils counts under 40/mm3 seems strongly related to bacterial infectious diseases.